


Change the Garden

by dactyliin (Volant)



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Communication, Everybody Lives, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Language of Flowers, M/M, why talk about your feelings when you can express them with plants
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-22
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-18 12:51:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11874876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Volant/pseuds/dactyliin
Summary: Jim can't find the words to let his first officer know how he feels. That's where the flowers come in.





	Change the Garden

Jim wasn’t a great student. That was a fact- by the time he hit high school, word had trickled through the Riverside grapevine. The teachers didn’t have high expectations, which mean that Jim didn’t have anything to live up to. Well, mostly.

His junior year at high school, there had been a mix-up in his class schedule and so he’d been stuck in an agriculture class for half the year. And that was all right; Jim had never done anything to terribly offend the FFA kids, was plenty happy to carry bags of dirt up to the rooftop garden for them. The teacher, Mrs. Grace (a sprightly septuagenarian with a shock of white hair, big blue eyes, and a mean cackle) had been pretty easy-going, too. In fact, the only things she really seemed to care about were her plants. Jim got used to moving pots around, working out which ones needed the most sunlight, which ones needed to be fertilised or watered, and when. He maybe even liked sitting around at the meetings, listening to the other kids talk about crops and the market and things- so much so that when the class ended, Jim kept going. It wasn’t like there was much else he’d rather do- it was garden, or go home to Frank and Sam, or fuck around with whatever he could find on his PADD. 

So that was how it began, but it really started with the carnations. Every year, the FFA did this fundraiser where they sold plants that they grew to help fund trips to different fairs in other counties. Everyone had to help grow something, even if (Mrs. Grace had said, staring Jim down over the rims of her fly-on-the-wall glasses) you weren’t going to compete. 

Jim picked out a packet of seeds from a bucket of ones that had been donated to the school by a local business, and got started. Growing plants was kind of boring, but it was easy- all Jim had to do was water the buckets a couple times a week and check for sprouts. When they did start growing, he had to rotate the bucket in the sun so they all grew evenly- and grow they did, developing healthy green stalks, thin, spear-like leaves, and thick, taut buds that swelled for days before finally giving up and ruffling out their bright red petals. 

Mrs. Grace just laughed when Jim showed them to her.

“Oh man,” she said, still grinning. “That’s great. Sorry, Jimmy. It just looks like you’re quite the womanizer.”

Then, when she got tired of Jim’s confused look, Mrs. Grace told him to put the bucket down. They made the trip downstairs to her office, where Mrs. Grace selected a thick volume from one of her bookshelves and tossed it at Jim’s face. 

“The Language of Flowers,” Jim read. He looked up at Mrs. Grace, who nodded at him to open the book. 

And who, Jim wondered, would ever have thought that some stuffed shirts, centuries back, could have made a whole language out of flowers? Who looked at a red carnation and thought ‘oh, that flower looks like it could mean either admiration or longing,’ and wrote it down? 

Jim ate it up. Those FFA meetings, as it turned out, were a lot more fun when you were as crazy about plants as the other people in the room. Plus, Jim loved being able to stick a handful of Tansies in a glass on the kitchen table without anyone (Frank) knowing what they meant. 

Mrs. Grace retired to Florida with her husband the next fall, but she’d left the book behind with a note on the inside cover. 

_ Jim: Goldenrod, Holly, Hollyhock. Basil. _

It was one of a few books that Jim had kept with him through the years- through Frank, Starfleet, Nero, Khan- until it had taken up permanent residence on one of the standard shelves in the Captain’s quarters of the  _ Enterprise.  _ By then, it was more for the good memories than anything else. After all, what use was a book about flowers in the middle of outer space?

**Author's Note:**

> Fic title taken from the poem "The Metal and the Flower" by P.K. Page. 
> 
> Flower meanings (thanks to any and all online flower dictionaries):  
> Red Carnation - admiration, My Heart Aches (carnations in general: Women, Love)  
> Tansy - declaration of war  
> Goldenrod - encouragement  
> Holly - hope  
> Hollyhock - ambition  
> Basil - good wishes


End file.
